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[Kagus]

Thought this up a while back, so I figured I might share it with y'all.

The basic premise is that your dwarves (or whatever) are either the prehistoric version of your race or some sort of weird Luddite cult.  Whatever the case, they are prevented from doing a number of things.  These include:

Digging
Woodcutting
Farming
Constructing buildings

So, yeah...  As you can probably tell, that limits what you can do rather significantly.  It's not called a challenge for nothing, eh?

You're allowed to set stockpiles and such, but your food-gathering actions are limited:

You can't farm, and you can't cook (no kitchen), so seeds are pretty useless.  Just get rid of 'em (or, y'know, don't.  Nothing saying you have to be tidy).  You can fish, but you can't clean the fish (no fishery) so they can't be eaten.  You can hunt, but you can't butcher the animal (no butcher's shop).  Basically the only semi-reliable method of getting food is herbalism.

MODDING NOTE:  If you change the entry for your creatures, you can add the [BONECARN] tag so that they can suck the juicy marrow from all those bones that turn up.  This has the interesting benefit of making hunting actually useful (punch it to death, let it sit in the sun until it rots, then eat the bones that are leftover).

As you won't be able to create any underground (or even indoor) areas on your own, it's recommended that you settle in an area that already has some.  Caves are the obvious choice, with the various pre-settled areas coming in a close second.

You'll also need to settle in an area with a good water source, so your folks don't die of thirst.

MODDING NOTE:  It might be a good idea to remove the alcohol dependency if you're playing as neandwarfthals, since you won't be able to get any.


Since you'll be churning out a lot more useless garbage this way, you'll probably need to set up a quantum stockpile off a cliff or something.  You can also use an open magma pipe, but that has its own dangers (especially since your dudes will all be wrestlers, at most).


As you can see, you won't be getting very far if you pick this challenge.  However, it is different and it is a challenge.  It's not a "savage" run, where you just let the dwarves fend for themselves, so you feel somewhat more involved with the whole affair.

Variations include deconstructing the starting wagons to allow for a trading depot or some essential buildings, and tech-free farming.


A couple things that should be noted are that this really should be played with modded creatures (alcohol dependency, bonecarn), and that you should absolutely not bring animals with you.  They'll breed themselves silly, and without buildings you won't be able to do anything about it.  This problem can arise on its own if your starting pack-animals happen to be "compatible".

I'm not entirely sure if rotting fish will produce bones.  I'll run a couple tests to figure it out.

[Retro]

...you should absolutely not bring animals with you.  They'll breed themselves silly, and without buildings you won't be able to do anything about it.  This problem can arise on its own if your starting pack-animals happen to be "compatible".

There's always multi-z drops and Pond/Pit Large Creature :D You could actually get a decent food supply going that way if you embark on a particularily steep mountain or somewhere else with enough open levels to drop.

But that aside, seems like a cool challenge. It seems like despite the challenge it'd be kind of repetitive, so I don't think I'll throw my hat in the ring.

[Demonic Spoon]

Aw, I thought the challenge would be to play as troglodytes or something.

[Calhoun]

Hmmm

I just take issue with the fishing really.
Cause we all know early peoples' fished.

Other than that, pretty good.

[Demonic Spoon]

We also know that early people hunted and traded... 

[kilakan]

aye they also made basic clothes and weapons...... whoch you can't do either without building.  Some of them also made tents and or mud huts.... sooooo: Intresting idea, requires heavey modding to be realistic.

[Kagus]

Didn't think about the pitting...  But that would require somewhat extreme natural cliffs, which don't tend to appear that often (these days).  Still though, it bears noting.  Nice catch.


Heck, I take issue with the fishing!  I'd love if they could find some way of getting something out of it, but unless raw fish leave bones behind when they rot, I don't know what to do about it.

And this isn't just early civilization...  This is no civilization.  But hey, you can't even make clubs or wooden spears in native DF...  I do admit that this is rather restrictive, but a no-building rule is the only thing that really makes "sense".  Having a nice little workshop set up outside the hole seems a little...  Odd.

And you can get three wooden logs from the wagon if you deconstruct it.  That's enough to build a depot.


By the way, I just realized something...  I think [BONECARN] prevents you from eating plants.  So you'll have to pick whether you want marrow-suckers or bean...  eaters.

[UristMcGunsmith]

Remove all reactions at the smelter and replace them with "make wooden spear" and other essentials. Pretend it's a camp or something

[Kagus]

Tried this with slightly-tweaked kobolds.  Just gave them a natural bite attack and made them [INTELLIGENT] so I could actually, y'know, assign duties to them.

Well, I couldn't test the fishing thing, since kobolds can't fish.  Aside from that though, it was great fun.  I had a hunter bump into a naked mole dog, strangle it do death, and then bring it to the refuse pile so it could rot and make delicious bones.

Then several folks got slaughtered by a giant bat, and I sent a three-kobold group of wrestlers out to try and corner the thing and bring it down.

Halfway there, the middle kobold finally goes berserk from the stress and turns on the guy behind him (the least-skilled of the group).  Using his berserk rage he tore him to shred, while the point man ran straight into the bat and, without backup, was promptly devoured.

The berserker then ran back, attacked another kobold who was coming to clean up the corpses, and then made his way to the central meeting area.

The herbalist ran around for a while longer before finally falling victim to the berserker's clutches.  "Your settlement as crumbled to its end".

[Asmodeous]

Why not allow them just the following buildings:

Fishery
Butcher
Craftsdwarfs workshop (only allow wood and bone carving)

Seems like it'd do the trick.

[kilakan]

I mean you can even eliminate the jobs that you don't want from the entity file in the raw, that way you can build forge but not use it, build a carpentry but not use it, ect.  Just leave Fishing, fish cleaning, wood/bone carving, butchery, hunting, architecture(depot), herbalism.  That way you can't farm, or anything else that would be seen as too advanced.

[Aspgren]

  You can fish, but you can't clean the fish (no fishery) so they can't be eaten. 

I was under the impression that dwarves consume raw turtles.

[Kagus]

Nope.  They consume live turtles, but not raw turtles.  Same as with other fish, turtles need to be cleaned before they can be devoured.

[Aspgren]

I guess all those turtles rotted incredibly fast because of the climate then .. there were turtle bones -everywhere-

[Kagus]

Note:  A "turtle" is a cleaned and prepared turtle, ready for eating.  A "raw turtle" is one that's just been plucked out of the pond, and is not yet ready for consumption.

If they were fished, and they weren't cleaned, then that means that rotting fish do leave bones after all...  That's nice.


An interesting side effect of the [BONECARN] tag is that it makes cannibalism possible.  Someone gets killed, their body rots, and then some lucky chap gets to munch on the bones of their loved one for supper.